Full summary:

What if you found out that everything you knew and everyone you loved had died? That is what Tayoncé found out when she was kidnapped. At first she was a regular teen living in 2009 with the exception that her mother abused her, and unknowing that she was living the wrong time and was actually born in the future. Her uptight, secured life was flipped on its head when she met the two strangers who had changed her life forever by taking her to the year 2040. Everything here was a complete three-sixty turn in her life; after meeting the wackiest family she's ever met and shown hospitality she's never known, Tayoncé begins to think that things might actually turn around for the better.

Now sticking out like a sore thumb, Tayoncé must overcome this drastic time jump, because like Gaston told her, there is no way of going back "home." She was never to return to the new, better life she had just began hoping for back in 2009 despite her pleading to go back. She was stuck here.

Stranded.

Gone were her few friends and her school. Gone was her closest friend, Mayonna, and her mother who was going tl help report Tayoncé's mother. Gone was her favorite ice-cream shop, the swings at the park she's visited since she was young, the boy she was about to finally talk to, the scholarship she could have won. Gone was whatever life she could and was about to make and gone was all hope.

Gone was Darla, her other mother in the past. Well, that was a good thing..

Suddenly this new life wasn't as happy as it had seemed. And she must come to terms with either somehow accepting this new life or go crazy trying to go back to an empty past.

Set so that Wilbur is 15 and Lewis is 13. Is set before the movie in the beginning but goes into it.

Rated T for abuse, language & mature content in later chapters.

A/N: Now since it's almost been a full year since I last updated this, it's time for a makeover. For as long as my muse will survive and because this aired on tv therefore resurfacing my crave for this, I'm rewriting this entire story. So if any changes, this is why.

[ Disclaimer: Nothing is mine except the OC ]

#1 : ~Ordinary Complicated Day

"Just a day,
Just an ordinary day.
Just trying to get by."

The girl's eyes snapped open, the sound of a baby's cry causing her to jerk awake once again. She turned over to her clock and fell to the floor instead, her hair spilling out underneath a nightcap. Picking herself up, she looked to the clock by her cot. It read 2:36 AM. She had to wake up for school at five in the morning. She sighed, then made her way to the small pallet on the floor where the small baby lay. Bags were visible and the shine in her dark brown eyes had been gone.

The baby's cry quieted to whines once being picked up. The girl rubbed circles in the baby's small back and mumbled into her thin hair.

"Shhh, shh. It's alright.. ..Bad dream?"

The small baby whimpered louder as if in response.

"It's okay...it's going to be okay..." she mumbled until the whimpers stopped completely.

Baby still in arms, she grabbed the box of formula and bottle in a corner of the room and tip-toed down the stairs to the kitchen. It was one of those all-wooden kitchens that when it gets dirty, it becomes visibly dirty, and impossible to clean because how far the filth soaks into the wood.

The small apartment consist of wooden counters, cabinets, countertops, a small table were the older woman ate her meals (and who was upstairs snoring loudly) in front of an old fashioned tube television. Only the refrigerator, microwave, sink, and stove were not made of trees.

As she prepared the bottle, she was careful not to make too much noise and prayed that the child would stay quiet, fearful of the punishment she would receive if the woman upstairs awoke. Taking the bottle from the microwave, she gathered everything and headed back upstairs, locking the bedroom door behind her. She knew better than to leave it unlocked especially with caring for the baby now; not doing so would result in only severe punishment, or worse: death. But then again, maybe death wouldn't be so bad compared to what the devilish-woman across the has done before. She would consider death as a sort of escape. In fact, for a long time she began looking forward to it.

But ever since Esperanza, as was the baby's name being, came into her life, her mother moved to the very tip of her breaking point, and she was punished and reminded everyday what she was and that she was just like her father—a stranger who had raped her mother. And having Esperanza live with them - living at all - was nothing but a mistake, like her.

But that is why she gave her the name Esperanza, meaning hope.

Esperanza finished her bottle at that moment, barely able to keep her tiny hazel eyes open, until she gave up the fight and fell asleep on the girl's shoulder after bring burped and having a diaper check. Once finished, she retired to her cot, hoping to catch a few more hours and already dreading tomorrow morning for the umpteenth time.

*~o~0~o~*

"Uh-huh,
Life's like this.
That's just the way it is…

Chill out,
What you yellin' for?
Lay back, it's all been done before.

And if you could only let it be…

Tell me
Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else gets me frustrated.
Life's like this,
you fall and you crawl
And you break
And you take what you get
And you turn it into
Honesty…"

Her sleep was no better than the next morning. After being woken by the pounding on her door by her mother, she sped to get dressed and off to school. It was very motivating to hear out your door, "Tayoncé! You get your lazy ass down here and make me some breakfast , or so help me, I will drag your ass across the floor and beat you just like last time!" she looked even more towards seeing Mayonna today.

Her friend had planned today out perfectly—after school, Tayoncé would take Esperanza and meet Mayonna and her mother at the video and book exchange at the library, just like any other time, but Tayoncé would take as many belongings she could fit in the baby stroller, and hopefully not return to Tayoncé's mother. The two wouldn't have to deal with Darla again; they would actually have a happy life, Tayoncé realized, and his gave her the motivation to push through another drag at school.

This thought gave her the energy needed to put up with her horrid mother, even though this was the fifth day she was going without food this time.

"What's taking you so long?!" Darla yelled.

Tayoncé smirked to herself, mentally beaming with happiness, thrilled that this was going to be the last time she was going to hear the—-

"Heffer! I know you hear me calling you!" The woman screamed from the recliner in front of the tv. "What is taking you so long with that food!"

Tayoncé mentally flinched at her mother's harsh words, but not physically. Never physically. That could only encourage her. Tayoncé called back, "nothing."

"Then why am I still here with no food right now!?"

The girl sighed to herself and prepared a plate to serve the lazy in front of the tube.

"'Bout time you did something useful," Darla said mumbled not-so-subtly. She hadn't glanced once at the girl and instead only had eyes for the last helpings in front of her.

Tayoncé slightly nodded, straining not to stare longingly at the plate and not watch her mother stuff her face. She made sure to clean the dishes before heading up the stairs.

"Child! Where the hell you goin'?" Darla boomed.

"To get Es—-the baby," she answered, referring to the whines coming from upstairs.

She knew way to well than to even remind her that the child had been given a name. The last time she had, there had been much yelling...

"Get your ass back in here." She turned around, pouting a finger at the young girl when she returned to stand beside her. Tayoncé didn't speak up that she had already done it, remembering what had happened last time. "Then after that," Darla continued, "do the laundry. And when you're done with that, get out of my sight," she waved her away.

'Gladly,' Tayoncé had unknowingly whispered under her breath as she walked off.

In a movement that seemed surprisingly swift for the bigger woman, she swipped he plate away, whirled around and slammed the girl into the wall.

"You little bitch!" Darla roared, rearing in her daughter's face. "Wanna run that buy me again!?"

Tayoncé tried not to flinch at the bits of food she could feel flying in her face. Her dark eyes were wide and her voice choked as she tried to speak: "Nothi—"

She was cut off as a hand slapped her face. Tayoncé stumbled.

"It had better be nothin'!" Darla shot. "And hurry and shut that brat up before I do."

Tayoncé's heart stopped for several seconds upon hearing this. Hundreds of images on the many options her dreadful mother could do came into view, and none of them was anything a moral person would do.

Darla smirked at seeing this once again made her daughter quicken her pace. 'Daughter,' she huffed, making her way back to the couch; she despised that word.

Tayoncé was lucky for this one time in her short life. She was grateful for the few possessions they had—which took less time cleaning—and that Esperanza was a patient baby.

Tayoncé had ran upstairs, bottle in hand, knowing that the baby girl was going to be red-faced with hunger. And she was right, she found—Esperanza was hollering her little head off and had made some distance from the pallet of blankets on the floor trying to keep her little head up; it was around the time she would begin to crawl.

Tayoncé scooped the tiny bundle up and began saying apologies in her small ears, until she was interrupted by her mother's voice: "What's taking you so fucking long to take these damn letters out?!"

Tayoncé replied with an excuse that she would be down. She knew that one of the envelopes sitting on the side table was the rent for the landlord, but she didn't question why there were three more addressed to the same person as well...

In response, Darla just yelled to take the hollering baby with her. And for once, she didn't sound angry. Tayoncé was grateful for that.

Some time ago, she had found an abandoned baby troller on the street. And Tayoncé had taken it home, cleaned it, and used it whenever she took Esperanza with her—which was almost every time she left the apartment. Now, it served to carry as much luggage as Tayoncé could fit inside: formula, clothes, her school bag, toothbrush and paste, and the few baby belongings she had. She just hoped she could get pasted her mother without her getting suspicious; she didn't have a moment to lose. After making to trips downstairs (one to drag the stroller down the stairs, the other to bring Esperanza downstairs and strap her in), Tayoncé sped the small child out the old, small, cramped apartment as fast as possible. Darla had been somewhere in the back of the house, doing something Tayoncé didn't care for; luck was once again on her side, something rare.

"And don't forget—letters to Mr. Jamingston," Darla had called.

Tayoncé didn't know if her mother heard her chuckling out the door or not, but she didn't stop—she ran as fast as her legs could push.

With nothing but what was in the stroller, they didn't have much. Already almost a block away, too far for the earth-bound-devil to catch up, Tayoncé suddenly remembered the letters in her hand. It was a lot of money, she knew, and she knew that Darla's job didn't pay much. She ripped them open and her eyes enlarged at the amount inside, before stuffing them in her pockets and chucking the envelopes in a trashcan. She couldn't care less than she already did—and that was less than the size of a grain of sand.

She was so close to freedom.
So close she could taste it.
Sweet, sweet, blessed freedom.